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Advanced Micro Devices secured a court order barring former employees who took jobs at Nvidia from disclosing AMD's confidential information to their new employer and from recruiting other AMD employees to join them at Nvidia. "The circumstantial evidence presented by AMD is compelling," U.S. District Judge Timothy Hillman wrote in his order adding, "They all made copies of confidential AMD information before leaving AMD, retained that information and immediately began working at a significant competitor. AMD therefore has a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits with regard to its claims for misappropriation of trade secrets."

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Advanced Micro Devices hasn't delved deeply into the Internet of Things chip market, like its rival Intel has, because it wants to focus on profitable IC markets, according to AMD's John Byrne. "I look at the classic PC market ... there's still 300 million PCs, still 90 million graphics chips. If I look at Intel, Nvidia, and my revenue, that’s still a $40 billion market -- even before you get to the IoT," he said in this interview.

Advanced Micro Devices had different levels of engagement with Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony in providing parts for the companies' latest game consoles, an AMD executive told Engadget. "There was some intellectual property that came in from the customer side to put inside the chip. There was some stuff that they would specify to develop exclusively for that product and we developed that. There was, of course, IP that is used by other products from AMD, e.g. microprocessor Jaguar cores, the graphics engines, display and high-speed I/Os that are common for our products. But there were [also] specific blocks that either came from that customer or were exclusively build for that customer," AMD's Saeid Moshkelani said.

A federal judge refused to dismiss claims of misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract brought against former employees of Advanced Micro Devices who took jobs at Nvidia. U.S. District Judge Timothy Hillman did dismiss a claim of unfair competition, however.

Advanced Micro Devices is said to have developed OverDrive 6, a dynamic overclocking technology that could go into its AMD Radeon HD 8000 graphics cards, according to the techPowerUp website, which says the technology would help AMD better compete with graphics cards from Nvidia. AMD did not comment on the report.

Roy Taylor, who spent a decade with Nvidia selling chips for that company, was named to lead global channel sales for Advanced Micro Devices. He reports to John Byrne, AMD's chief sales officer. In addition, AMD named Devinder Kumar as its chief financial officer. Kumar, a 28-year veteran of AMD, had served as interim chief financial officer since September and previously was the company's corporate controller for more than a decade.